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"O Lord, it's hard to be humble," sang Mac Davis some time back, "When you're perfect in every way...." He hit a responsive chord with many of us. We all want to be recognized as somebody special. Nothing is more human than that.
Former House Speaker "Tip" O'Neill told a story about "Blameless Jake" Bloom of Boston--who fed 3 generations of Irish, Jews & Italians on credit in his small variety store. In appreciation, his friends & neighbors sent him to London for a fling. Inspired, Jake came home, slimmed down, capped his teeth, bought a hair piece & hit Miami Beach. He met a beautiful blonde & just then, was struck by a bolt of lightning & died.
"God," Jake complained when he reached the Pearly Gates, "In the twilight of my years, I just wanted to have a little fun."
"Oh, it's you Jake," said God. "I'm sorry I didn't recognize you."
We all want to be recognized as somebody special. Even Jesus' disciples argued about who would sit on his right hand
& who would sit on his left. It was a reflection of how badly they misjudged the nature of his kingdom when they bickered over who would be first. Perhaps that is why Jesus told them this parable: "When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the best place. Someone more important than you may have been invited. Then your host would have to come & say to you, `Let him have this place.' Then with embarrassment you would have to move to the lowest place. Instead, when first arriving, go sit in the lowest place so that your host will come to you & say, `Come on up, my friend, to a better place.' This obviously will bring you honor before the other guests." Then Jesus adds, "For everyone who makes himself great will be humbled, & everyone who humbles himself will be made great." It is interesting to note that Jesus, who was a devoted student of the Old Testament, took his example from a similar teaching in the Book of Proverbs.
"Everyone who humbles himself will be made great...."
Most of us are familiar with Benjamin Franklin's effort to attain moral perfection by his own bootstraps. He drew up a list of 12 virtues which he thought embodied the essential traits of a good life. His program was to focus his mind on one virtue each week, keeping track of each daily violation. Thus he went through the list, thinking that since his conscience told him what was right & what was wrong, he could attain the good & avoid the bad.
One day he showed his list to an old Quaker friend, who gently informed him that he had omitted the virtue of humility. Franklin added it at once. His list then read as follows: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, humility.
Franklin, like so many other people, put humility last on his list of virtues. Jesus put it first in his Beatitudes, just as Christian theology would later put pride as the first & most deadly of the sins.
Most of us would not think of pride as a sin but rather as simply a character defect. "Conceit," someone has said, "is what makes a little squirt think he is a fountain of knowledge."
Or as someone else was described: "He honestly believes that if he had never been born, there would be people asking, "Why not?" We normally do not think of pride as a sin.
With a few minutes thought, however, I believe that we can see why true humility is essential to authentic Christian faith.
In the first place, it is humility that makes us teachable. Conceit builds a wall around our brains. Do you think that George Washington Carver could have found hundreds of uses of the peanut & the sweet potato if he had not humbled himself before them that they might teach him all of their inner secrets? All knowledge begins with humility.
Zig Zigler tells that during World War II the government, for some reason, had a project under way to artificially reproduce seawater. The research was being done at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The scientists were confident they could solve the problem. They worked long & hard & finally one day the shouts of "Eureka!" or whatever scientists shout when they've had a breakthrough, came forth from the laboratory. They had placed natural sea water & man-made sea water under the microscope & they were identical in every way. Then one of the older scientists suggested one final test before they pronounced the project complete. Confidently the other scientists pointed out that the tests were concluded & there was no time to waste. The older scientist insisted, however, since the final test would delay the results no more than 24 hours.
The final test was simplicity itself. A barrel of natural sea water & a barrel of laboratory sea water were placed side by side. Several fish were placed in the natural sea water & they swam around quite happily (I'm assuming that fish are happy). Then the scientists placed the fish in the man-made sea water & (I'll bet you can finish the story, can't you?) almost immediately the fish gave signs of discomfort & distress. Shortly thereafter they were dead.*
Suppose they hadn't made that final simple test?
Intellectual arrogance is the mortal enemy of scientific endeavor. An absolute humility is essential to the person who is seeking the truth in science.
So it is with the person who is seeking truth about spiritual things. Jesus said that "lest ye become as little children, ye cannot enter the kingdom of God." On another occasion he told Nicodemus that Nicodemus would need to go back to his mother's womb & be born all over again if the kingdom was to be a reality in his life. I wonder if it might not make a real difference for many of us if we believed each Sunday morning when we came to this church that there was still more about faith that we needed to learn. Many of us shut our minds years ago to any new truths about God. No wonder we do not come with eagerness and expectation. We need to become as little children. True humility makes us teachable.
Humility is also essential to right relationships with our neighbors. A little girl once wrote a poem about her garbage man that hit the nail right on the head:
